eurogreen:

Not that I actually searched much, but I never saw an explanation of what the Wikileaks people were thinking with their silly preferences -- unless it really was a mere clerical error (or several clerical errors). Net result of their participation : they seem to have contributed to depriving the Greens of a possible extra seat.

From the article I linked the image that emerges is that Assange's deal maximising faction on the board turned out to be a minority, moved to give Assange full freedom to deal, and when denied went ahead and couped the boards preferences by handing in something the board had not decided.

Why I resigned from the WikiLeaks party | Daniel Mathews | Comment is free | theguardian.com

At length, it was decided for NSW to put the Greens above the Shooters & Fishers and the Christian Right -- with whom deals had been considered and rejected.

WA was the easy case, because we had a pre-existing arrangement with the Greens senator, Scott Ludlam. They would clearly be ahead of the major parties, and Family First and the Christian Right. This was presented as uncontroversial and little argument was made.

Victoria was the most difficult. There was a vote on a resolution, which was complicated and contingent upon another deal, but roughly the question was whether or not to do a deal with Family First and put them in the top 10 preferenced parties, if we didn't get a better offer.

The vote went three yes, three abstain, five no. Shipton and Assange (via John as proxy) voted yes.

That the coup also contained clerical errors is not surprising, coups are often sloppy.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Bear in mind that this is a system that did indeed work as intended following the last reform, the expansion from five to six seats filled per state per election, until the micro-parties worked out how to game the system.

And there are more modest reforms that would restore the system to functioning as it did before the gaming began.

(1) Preferential voting above the line.

At present it is the complexity of individual preference voting that drive people to voting above the line, but if people could vote their preferences above the line, the party preference sheets would lose much of their clout.

(2) Put a primary vote threshold in place.

A primary vote threshold of one tenth of a quota would redistribute most micro-party votes to major and third parties in one round. It would eliminate the effect where one micro-party gets pushed up from a small fraction of a quota to a large fraction of a quota just by staying ahead of the cut and receiving the votes of eliminate parties it did preference deals with.

(3) Allow partial preferential voting

If a ballot with 18 votes below the line was accepted as a formal ballot, then people would be free to vote their own preferences without the chore of completing 90% or more of a table-cloth sized ballot with no more than two continuity errors.

The opening to abuse of the proportional preferential system could be closed. Indeed, now that the main losers to the system have been the Coalition and the ALP, it seems like it might be closable. But it will require a bit of a laughing stock campaign to get it fixed, because the minor parties hold the balance of power on issues where the Coalition and ALP is divided, and not fixing the system is one price they can demand for support on other votes.

It may come down to how the balance of power shakes out in practice. Both Senators of the new Palmer United Party had a primary vote over four tenths of a quota in both QLD and Tassie, Nick Xenophan and his independent group in South Australia got more than a full quota, and the Liberal Democrats got more than half a quota in NSW. So if that group ends up holding the balance of power, it could negotiate changes that are open to 3rd parties but reduce the opportunities for micro-parties to game the system.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

I quite enjoy the chaos of minor party Senate preferencing, and I think it's an overall good for democracy.  Voters can check the party preference lists (which are submitted to the election commission), or vote below the line and avoid the lists entirely.  And as far as I can tell, many of the proposed improvements to Senate voting seem to me likely to further entrench the major  parties and decrease political diversity.  

As for the Wikileaks party, it seems to me that (a) Assange isn't really suited to lead a party with a democratic governing structure and (b) wikileaks was infected with the absolutely incendiary hatred some Australians have for the Greens.  (Greg Barns is no friend to the Greens.  Eg: "The court action by Gunns is not about silencing protesters, writes Greg Barns"  http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/20/1103391697956.html )  

The Pirate Party offered a really marked contrast of transparent and democratic political processes.   (See:  http://pirateparty.org.au/2013/08/18/preferencing-statement-for-federal-election-2013/ )
They've even got their pairwise comparison table up.  (And their window into the soap opera of the Australian Democrats)

(disclosure - I am a member of no political party)